


Little Brother

by Lady_of_Lorule



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon), Young Justice - All Media Types
Genre: Anger, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24298075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_of_Lorule/pseuds/Lady_of_Lorule
Summary: “Robin can’t be dead,” Wally said, staring at Black Canary blankly.Something cold crept over the room, the echo of Canary’s words ringing in the team’s ears. M’gann had collapsed and was sobbing into Conner’s shoulder. Everyone else was too shocked to react. They stood around the room like statues, still and lifeless.“He is. I’m so sorry.”"Where's Nightwing?""He hasn't been home since he found out."
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd, Dick Grayson & The Team (Young Justice), Dick Grayson & Wally West, Kon-El | Conner Kent/M'gann M'orzz
Comments: 7
Kudos: 294





	Little Brother

“Robin  _ can’t  _ be dead,” Wally said, staring at Black Canary blankly.

Something cold crept over the room, the echo of Canary’s words ringing in the team’s ears. M’gann had collapsed and was sobbing into Conner’s shoulder. Everyone else was too shocked to react. They stood around the room like statues, still and lifeless.

“He is. I’m so sorry.”

Wally shook his head. Artemis slid a hand up his shoulder and squeezed. He whipped his head to look down at her. She only looked at him with eyes so full of pain, and a single tear rolling down her cheek. He knew that look. He watched as that tear seemed to take forever gliding over the panes of her face. They’d all seen Robin just three days ago. Artemis had sparred with him. He couldn’t be  _ dead. _

“What happened?” Kaldur asked. Next to him, Garth was embracing Tula, holding her as her shoulders began to shake. He closed his purple eyes as well and ducked his face down.

“Batman did not tell the League all the details. All I know is that Robin was tricked into leaving Batman and was killed. Understandably, it has been hard to reach Batman for any more information.” Kaldur nodded and fell back, as if his strings had been cut. Tula reached out and grabbed his hand. Canary looked over all of them. “I’m always available if any of you need someone to talk to.”

She stood and turned, to give them privacy to mourn their teammate. Wally stumbled forward though, grabbing her shoulder. She turned and looked at him in surprise.

“Wally?”

“Where’s Nightwing? And Batgirl?”

She sighed. “Batgirl is in Gotham. She is taking some time off.” Then she hesitated. Dread curled in Wally’s stomach.

“Where’s Nightwing?” He felt Artemis and Conner at his back, supporting him.

“When I talked to Batgirl, she said that Nightwing did not react well to the news. He left the Batcave and hasn’t been home since.”

He let his hand drop. Canary examined him for a moment, then sighed and left.

Wally moved without thinking. He sensed more than felt his friends following him, but he didn’t stop until they were in the garage and he knew they were alone. Finally, he turned and looked at them. Artemis had taken over comforting M’gann and Kaldur and Conner both stood before him looking… lost. They looked like the earth had been yanked out from under them and they were drifting.

Robin was dead. Robin, the boy that had taken on their friend’s uniform and trained and fought beside them. The boy with the crooked grin and the grim sense of humor. He had been like a little brother to all of them. Wally couldn’t even comprehend it. How could Robin be dead? He was too young, too smart, too skilled.

“We need to find Dick,” Wally said, shoving away his denial. That could wait. 

“Maybe he doesn’t want to be found,” Conner replied, crossing his arms. “Batgirl said he ran away.”

“Exactly! He just lost his brother and now he’s missing, and I doubt Batman is in any shape to be there for him right now, so it’s up to us.” Wally pulled up the holographic controls to the computer and opened the tracking function. He searched for Nightwing. “I’m going to find him. You’re all welcome to join me.”

“He’s a Bat. If he doesn’t want to be found, then we’re not going to find him,” Artemis said, not cruelly, but factually.

“No, he’s my best friend, and he’s grieving. I’m not going to let him wander around Gotham, the murder capital of the US, alone right now.”

“We will help,” Kaldur said solemnly. The others nodded in agreement. Wally’s shoulders slumped, and then the computer pinged. A dozen news feeds and articles popped up, all keyed into the search words “Nightwing” and all within the last forty-eight hours.

“Holy shit. He’d been busy.”

Wally’s eyes skimmed article after article in superspeed.  _ Nightwing Busts Arms Deal on Gotham Piers, Nightwing Spotted in Firefight Near Crime Alley, Nightwing Drops off Three Wanted Criminals to the GCPD,  _ and a few similar headlines. All in the last two days.

“He couldn’t have done all of this,” Conner said, brow furrowed. “No one could, except maybe a speedster.”

“It was him all right. There are pictures and footage to support every one of these headlines,” M’gann said quietly. Artemis squeezed her shoulders.

“Which brings up another problem,” Wally said, his bad feeling getting worse by the second. “Dick never gets caught on camera.”

“Which means either he wants to get caught or he doesn’t care if he does,” Kaldur finished, his mouth a grim line. “We need to find him. Now. And we need to be the first ones who do.”

Bio-ship purred to life overhead. M’gann straightened, her costume flowing over her. “Let’s go. We can find him on the way.”

None of them argued. They all piled into the ship. M’gann took the pilot’s seat and Wally stole Dick’s usual spot, all of the headlines circling around him. Artemis tried to call Batgirl to get more information, but there was no answer. No one dared to suggest contacting the Batcave.

“I think I have something,” Wally announced as they approached Gotham airspace.

“What is it?” Conner demanded.

“Someone posted a blurry pic of who looks like Dick Grayson at a bar in Bludhaven.”

“What’s Bludhaven?”

“Is it actually Dick?”

“Did you say he’s in a bar?”

Wally held up his hands, silencing the tide of questions. He flicked his hands and the tweet appeared in the center of the ship. “Bludhaven is Gotham’s shitty, smaller sister city, but with even more gambling and shady public figures. The picture isn’t great, but I’m ninety percent sure that it is him, and yes, the geo-tag says that he’s in a bar in Bludhaven’s shittiest neighborhood.”

“How do you know so much about Bludhaven?” Artemis asked, looking at him with a weirded out expression.

He shrugged. “Dick has an apartment there for when his cases in Gotham bled over into Bludhaven. Apparently it happens a lot.”

“Got the coordinates. Going there now,” M’gann said, steering them over the misty Gotham skyscrapers and down the coast. A cluster of bright lights appeared ahead. Bludhaven.

“We should probably dress down. He came to the bar as Dick and not Nightwing,” Artemis said, frowning down at the arrow logo on her chest.

Obediently, they all swapped out of their uniforms, putting on the spare civilian clothes that they stowed on the Bio-ship for special missions. M’gann settled the Bio-ship on a rooftop not far from the bar Dick was hopefully still at. The tweet was from a bit over an hour ago, and he easily could have been gone by now, but they had to check. M’gann floated them down to street-level.

“Are we in the red light district?” Artemis hissed as they stepped out of the alley.

Wally shielded his eyes against the sudden sharp neon lights assaulting them. The street was clogged thick with tourists, panhandlers, and, yes, prostitutes. Wally, unfortunately, recognized their surroundings.

“Believe it or not, this is  _ not  _ Bludhaven’s red light district. That’s about three blocks over. This is the seedy gray area between some of the most popular casinos and the black market. Mix of tourists and legit gangsters here,” he whispered back.

Kaldur’s face was set with determination. “We find Dick quickly and get out of here.”

They set off down the street, moving quickly through the thick press of people. It was a Saturday night after all. Soon enough, they came up to the bar Dick was possibly in. There was a line outside and a tall, muscular bouncer out front. Wally abruptly remembered that they were all teenagers, except for Kaldur. But Dick had gotten in.

“Megan,” Kaldur said. She nodded and stepped towards the bouncer. Her eyes flashed green, and then he was stepping aside and letting them pass. Wally hurried inside, hiding a bit behind Conner’s bulk as the line complained loudly.

He sighed as the door faded out of view, then was renewed with a fresh jolt of fear as he saw that it was not a bar at all that Dick had come into. It was an underground fighting ring.

And Dick was beating the crap out of a man in the ring.

“Oh God,” Artemis groaned to his right, her words nearly drowned out by the thick, intoxicated crowd jam packed around the ring, roaring their approval as Dick decked his opponent squarely across the jaw.

“This isn’t good,” M’gann murmured, staring at Dick with concern written blatantly across her face.

“Kid, see if you can get close to Dick. Try to talk him down,” Kaldur ordered. “Conner, help him.”

As a pair, they worked their way through the crowd, Conner working as both a shield and wedge to get Wally through the rowdy, jostling crowd. Their friends quickly vanished behind them, swallowed by the mass. Wally kept plowing forward. He couldn’t make out the ring, but he could tell from the crowd’s reaction how the fight was going. Read: overwhelmingly in Dick’s favor.

Finally, they made it to the front row. Wally had to crane his neck up to see the ring. Dick and the other man were still going, but now the man was clearly hurting, bowed over in pain, but not giving up. Dick was still standing tall and proud as if he was feeding off the crowd, untouchable. Wally knew better though. He knew all of Dick’s tells. Like the way he rolled his shoulder that had been shot last year. Or the way he favored his right leg, because he’d twisted his ankle just last month and it wasn’t completely done healing yet. Little signs that he wasn’t as invincible as the crowd seemed to believe.

And he knew the second that Dick saw them. It wasn’t more than a quick flick of his blue eyes in their direction, but he saw the grimace that tightened his lips as he turned back to his opponent. And he knew it was that moment of distraction that allowed his opponent to land a punch soldily in his gut. Dick doubled over and the crowd roared. It was hard to tell if they were happy or upset.

Wally and Conner could only stand there and wince as Dick started taking hit after hit. After a painful minute, the man was declared the winner and Dick was limping to the edge of the ring. He slipped under the rope and dropped to the floor in front of his friends. His lip was dripping blood steadily, staining his white shirt, which was ripped, and his eye was starting to form a large bruise. It looked like it might swell shut.

He glared at them and for a moment everything faded away but the three of them.

“Leave the me fuck alone,” Dick growled, trying to shove between them.

And the moment ended.

Conner snagged the back of his shirt. Dick turned and swung a fist, lightning fast, at Conner’s jaw. Wally was too surprised that he could move at all after that beating to do anything. The half-Kryptonian merely let the blow land and then stared down at his friend coolly.

“Come on,” Conner ordered, not releasing his grip. He then herded both Wally and Dick out a side door, into the grimy, needle-littered alley next to the fight club. M’gann, Kaldur and Artemis were already waiting.

Conner let go of Dick’s shirt and he stumbled forward, glaring back at Conner. He was unaffected. He just crossed his arms.

“What are you all doing here?!” Dick demanded, wiping at his lip. He only succeeded in smearing blood across his face.

“Saving your ass, apparently,” Artemis snapped back. Kaldur placed a hand on her shoulder, but she just shrugged it off. “What are you doing? Trying to get yourself killed?!”

He laughed bitterly. “What would it matter if I was?”

That stopped her short. Kaldur stepped forward, trying to regain control of the rapidly deteriorating situation. They had all been so fixated on finding Dick that they had failed to come up with a plan for when they finally found him. Wally was cursing himself for not anticipating this.

“We know that you are grieving—” Kaldur said, and Dick flinched— “but this is not healthy or safe. We know that you haven’t been home and that you’ve been fighting nonstop. Have you slept? Have you eaten?”

Just looking at him, Wally could see that the answer was no. Dark shadows ringed the eye that wasn’t rapidly bruising and his shirt hung off him. Wally was willing to bet that those clothes had either been purchased sometime tonight or been grabbed from one of the million caches the Bats kept all over the area.

“Well, if you’re here to drag me home, don’t bother. I’m not going back to the Cave until Bruce gets his head out of his ass, and maybe not even then,” Dick snarled.

“Everyone is grieving for Jason, Dick, but that doesn’t mean—” M’gann started to say.

Dick slammed his hand into the brick wall and they all jumped. “ _ Don’t  _ say his name.” He swallowed, and then brokenly whispered, “Please.”

Wally stepped forward and gingerly laid a hand on Dick’s shoulder. He wasn’t shoved off. He murmured, “What are you doing?”

Dick’s head dropped against the wall. “I don’t know. I barely remember getting here. I fought with Bruce, I know, and I think I talked to Babs. I can’t remember what I said. I just kept finding people to fight, but they’re not who I want to find.”

“You were trying to make yourself a target, weren’t you?” Conner asked, eyes widening.

Dick bristled, but Wally squeezed his shoulder and he deflated again. “Maybe. Yes. It didn’t work anyways.”

“Who were you trying to attract by going on a suicide run?” Artemis demanded.

His head snapped towards her, his scowl back. “Who the hell do you think?! The psycho who killed my brother!”

“You know who killed him? And he’s still free?!?” Wally exclaimed.

“It was the Joker,” Dick said, and gave a hollow laugh. “It’s always the goddamn Joker. My little brother is dead, and that psycho is walking free. Unless Bruce actually bothered to stop brooding and do something.” He looked around at them and sneered. “Of course he hasn’t. You would have heard if Batman caught the Joker.”

“Canary didn’t tell us,” Conner said.

“Why are you surprised? We’re always the last to know, right?”

They could tell that there was more, more that he wasn’t telling them. Maybe about Jason’s death, or his fight with Bruce, but none of them pushed him. He still seemed unhinged, swinging wildly between despair and anger. They’d never seen him like this.

“Come back with us,” M’gann said after a long moment. Dick looked at her, and he seemed more vacant than upset, so she pressed on. “To the Cave. You shouldn’t be alone right now. None of us should.”

“Sorry, Miss M, but no way in hell am I going back to the Cave right now. I— I can’t.”

Wally understood. Jason’s ghost was at the Cave, and at the Manor, and at school. He was everywhere. No wonder he was wandering around Bludhaven. He was trying to outrun a ghost.

“What are you going to do?” Kaldur asked.

Dick tipped his head back. “I have a place here. One I didn’t tell Bruce about. I’ll stay here for a bit.” He looked over at them, and there was something softer in his eyes, something sadder. “I’ll stay out of trouble. Promise.”

“I’ll stay with you,” Wally said. Dick looked at him in surprise. He shrugged. “What? I’m eighteen. I can do stuff like that now.”

“...Okay.”


End file.
